Finally, beginning in 1950, he was "re-educated" during nine years of "reform through labor" in a Chinese Communist prison for "war criminals."

Among the best known of his partisan actions was the raid on Communist prison in Kielce in August 1945, in which roughly 300 political prisoners were freed.

Heroes of the Polish resistance - enemies of Stalin's Communism - ended up in Soviet gulags and Polish Communist prisons.

The writer, translator and, for six years, prisoner in a Communist prison still has trouble getting used to the idea of being President of the republic.

Mr. Janka, who became a publisher here in 1951, served three years in a Communist prison as an anti-Stalinist.

"I think Bob Kerrey did the right thing," said Pham Dien, 64, who fought with the Americans in Vietnam and spent eight years in a Communist prison.

With him in the room today was some old comrades from Communist prisons.

While in Communist prisons, Huang Wei refused to admitted that he was wrong in supporting Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang government.

Some of their fellow church members curiously began to resemble guards or interrogators in Communist prisons who someone from the old country recalled seeing meting out torture.

For doing just that, he spent three and a half years in Communist prison.